I think its a matter of stepping back from it when you get worn out. It’s like running, you need to take a breather every once in a while. The hard part is, how many breaks can you afford to take when you’re on a deadline?

Standing back and taking a look at the larger scope of the whole project gives you orientation of what you’ve completed and what you have left to accomplish. So if you’re halfway through the pencils and getting exhausted, you stand up and sort through the pages and realize “wow I already did half of them!”

Also coffee or red bull helps a lot.

It’s good to know I’ll have to work a lot quicker, as I seem to have slowed down quite a bit when drawing this year.

One tactic I’ve tried, and while it works, it’s rather torturous: not letting myself sleep until it’s done. This has got me through 4 papers and about 10 paintings, but it does play merry hell with your schedule and awareness the next day. That, and having a pill of Adderol seems to help, but if you’re not perscribed, then that may actually be a step backwards. Another thing I do is (though this may be incompatible with neck-breathing bosses) is put a project aside for several months and work on another or several at once or possibly the same project on multiple layers (storywriting, researching, roughing, character sketching, backgrounds, scribbling down ideas for the next project) and then come back to it when I feel that tug. It means I don’t spend any time idling or getting out of the habit of working, and therefore produce 150% more and better work than if I’d done only one thing and suffered through a crippling block.

good luck.

Which is bad, since I always talk about the novels and comics that could be. One of these days I’ll get something finished >>;;

I don’t really have a solution. Except for maybe watching something totally awful show or some really horrible made-for-TV movie on Lifetime. Then you’ll be like, man I’d rather do ANYTHING than sit here and watch this. Then forcing yourself to write/draw won’t be as awful.

Yeah. Probably not the best idea.

I find myself hating the final ‘render’ part of any piece, not only in the execution (Which bores me silly), but the result is often too polished and lacks whatever energy and flair I put into it at the rough stage. What have I done about this? Refined my overall style into a very rough one that needs very little polish to ruin the solid fundamentals.

Of course, unless the popular consensus changes regarding art and design, I’m unlikely to get taken seriously professionally (And I don’t look forward to struggling to pay the bills post-university).

I think it might be worth asking yourself what exactly it is that you find unpleasant about followthrough which prohibits you from doing so.

As for stories, I could never make one up, that’s why my comic idea never really took off.

Music sometimes helps, but other times I feel I need complete silence in order to draw something.